1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of data transfer. More particularly, in one exemplary aspect, the present invention is directed to methods and apparatus for contact information transfer among wireless devices.
2. Description of Related Technology
Communications products and services (e.g., phone, email, internet-based social networking, etc.) continue to expand and evolve. This rapid expansion of new communication modalities also drives the related growth of new user identity mechanisms. Many people now maintain home, work, fax and mobile phone numbers, several email addresses, and a myriad of social networking accounts (e.g., instant messenger or IM handles, Facebook™ and Twitter™ profiles, etc.). Each of these systems may have different protocols, message flows and addressing schemata designed around their wholly (or incrementally) different system functionalities.
Previous systems attempted to consolidate and reduce user identities across systems; thus, a person used (or reused) a single user identity for different communication modalities. Yet other approaches provided cursory translations from a first service to other services using proxy user identities; for example, certain prior art gateways routed VoIP calls (Voice over Internet Protocol) to PLMN networks (Public Land Mobile Network). Similarly, other prior art solutions could convert SMS (Short Messaging Service) text messages into voice messages and route them to voice-only phones.
Most recently, however, growing concerns over privacy, and desires for anonymity, have overridden convenience. Moreover, instead of users actively minimizing their user identity footprint, it is now more common for people to maintain multiple user identities, and control the diffusion of these identities. For example, many people prefer to maintain a number of work-specific identities for professional and work acquaintances; and separate personal identities for personal communications. Thus, the contact information provided to a co-worker or business associate generally differs from contact information shared among friends.
Unfortunately, the history of consolidation and separation of user identities has created a virtual labyrinth of intertwining contact identities; any single person might have a web of interconnecting and reconnecting user identities, distributed to coworkers, family members, friends, etc. Additionally, coworkers become friends, friends become coworkers, contacts go in and out of touch, new accounts or phones are purchased, etc. Appreciably, the task of identity management (i.e., controlling the distribution of contact information) is rapidly changing, and has become virtually unmanageable, especially for persons simultaneously using or subscribing to many of the various different modalities previously described.
Address books, in an electronic form, are digital equivalents to their paper-based progenitors. Electronic address books are databases that are used for storing entries that are now colloquially known by users as “contacts”. The information stored in these contact entries (“contact information”) may include without limitation: (i) names; (ii) pictures or avatars associated with the names; (iii) various phone numbers (i.e., home, work, cellular, etc.); (iv) e-mail addresses (e.g., both personal and work-related); (v) fax numbers; (vi) user names or profiles associated with various services (i.e., instant messaging applications, Facebook™, Twitter™, etc.); and (vii) various other related information associated with a user (i.e., birthdays, favorite things, names of related family members, anniversary dates, information on how met or introduced, actual physical addresses of their residence or work, etc.). Hence, the term “address book” is somewhat under-inclusive of all the information that might be contained therein. Accordingly, in the present context, the term “address book” shall be used refer without limitation to any listing of contact and/or other information relating to one or more individuals or entities.
Advanced implementations of electronic address books widely vary in capabilities and features. Many electronic address books can transfer contact information from one device to another. For example, a mobile phone may use a short-range wireless modem to transmit contact information to another mobile device, such as via the well-known Bluetooth protocol. In another example, a laptop may use a wireline or WLAN connection to access a central database containing directory information to retrieve user-specific information data.
Unfortunately, prior art solutions for transferring contact information between devices suffer from several drawbacks. Firstly, the distribution of contact information is poorly controlled; i.e., a first person often has no control (or an unacceptable level of control) over the use and distribution of his contact information by other users. For example, consider the following scenario, “Andrew” provides his contact information to “Bob”; shortly thereafter, Bob shares the contact information with “Cameron” because Cameron is interviewing Andrew for a job. Andrew is unaware that Cameron has his contact information, and posts unflattering information on his website. Andrew may have been under the impression that Bob would not share his personal information with his interviewer Cameron. For his part, Bob may have shared Andrew's contact information to help Cameron contact Andrew (i.e., Bob was unaware that Andrew's personal information was sensitive). This scenario illustrates how even accidental uncontrolled contact information transfers can be disastrous. Clearly, intentionally malicious or surreptitious activities could be even more problematic.
Secondly, systems which require painstaking effort to verify that each entry of contact information is authorized for transfer may be unrealistic. A person's contact information may be composed of a large number of entries; each entry may have different degrees of privacy, importance, rules of use/distribution, etc. For large transfers, the resulting authorization traffic is extremely burdensome for all entities involved (e.g., the transfer and requesting agents, the networks, etc.).
Also, prior art solutions lack a cohesive organization, Generally, contact information is stored in a hodge-podge manner, based on individual service type, different application programs, user profile databases, etc. For example, contact information stored in application specific databases is usually restricted from access by other programs. Consequently, information can (or must) be replicated many times in many programs. Furthermore, human error and apathy, can lead to spotty updating of contact information, and/or incorrect or inconsistent information across different applications.
Based on the foregoing, improved methods and apparatus are needed for improving the transfer and management of contact information between different devices and/or environments. Such improved methods and apparatus should ideally leverage existing hardware and software as much as possible, so as to facilitate their implementation on existing (“legacy”) devices, as well as minimize deployment costs from both the network side and mobile device perspective. They should also ideally provide, inter alia, capabilities for managing the distribution of contact information, thereby providing users with greater control over their identity “footprint”.